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THE FAMILY 

II 


Addresses by 

JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS, PH.D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

AND 

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS, D.D. 

MINISTER OF THE FIRST PARISH CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE 


Delivered before the Section on the Family and the 
Community at the National Conference of Charities 
and Correction, Baltimore, May 15, 1915 



NEW YORK 

CHARITY ORGANIZATION DEPARTMENT 
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 

MCMXV 
























































































•BP 22 Wl6 


* • 




0 
















THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 

BY JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS 




THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 

By James Hayden Tufts 

T HE point of view of the student at the present time in 
approaching such a problem as that of the ethics of the 
family makes his task less simple than that of old. He 
cannot depend upon an infallible intuition or an infallible deduc¬ 
tion. He must consider consequences, on the one hand, and 
psychology of men and women, on the other; he must consider 
social conditions and the evolution of human personality. Doubt¬ 
less there are seemingly constant factors—the thrill of passion 
and the necessity of rational control; the love of mother for 
child and of child for mother; the effects of habit and the power 
of social convention; the conflict between individual choice and 
public opinion—all these in a sense reappear in generation after 
generation. They claim their place in any treatment, but love 
between the sexes has been made in many respects a different 
thing because of all that fiction and poetry, as well as church and 
state, have done to it. Recently the industrial revolution, the con¬ 
ditions of city life, the progress of higher education, the general 
movement toward emancipation of woman, have combined so to 
change both the controlling conditions of human life and the 
mental attitudes and temper of men, women, and children, that 
the problems long since comfortably and confidently settled clamor 
for reconsideration. Ethics may or may not reach conclusions 
as to marriage, divorce, economic dependence of woman, parental 
responsibility, distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth, 
which agree with the judgments of the past, but no ethics can 
simply reaffirm these past judgments without noting the changed 
personalities and changed conditions. 

We may well recognize, first of all, that instead of the ethics 
of the family, we might more properly speak of the ethics of 
families, for the ethical questions which are really uppermost in 
the middle class family of to-day are very different from those 

5 


THE FAMILY 


which are at the front in the working-class family. Neverthe¬ 
less, there are some general considerations which apply to both. 

Moralists sometimes make a distinction between positive 
and negative morality. Positive morality offers values: negative 
morality says “Thou shalt not!” There is perhaps no field of 
ethics which in the past has had a point of view more prevailingly 
negative than the morals of the family. 

(1) It has said little about a duty to marry, but much against 
sexual relations except in marriage; little about a right choice, 
much about divorce. 

(2) It has said little as to the positive value of children, 
but has tabooed such questions as restriction or illegitimacy. 

(3) Since the whole sexual nature is so liable to become the 
cause of evil, it has urged that we know and talk as little about it 
as possible; that we do not mention to a girl any of the unpleasant 
possibilities of communicable disease; that we bring up children 
upon the basis that innocence is the only virtue for the young, and 
that there is in any case no positive value in at least the physical 
side of love. 

We are not entirely satisfied with this negative morality. 
It doesn't work well in several particulars. Some of the facts 
which challenge attention are the following: 

(1) There is a small and decreasing birth-rate among the 
educated classes, which means, unfortunately, that these classes 
are constantly passing out from our population. In this country 
some of us, at least, believe that the stock which settled in New 
England and moved on into New York and the middle west was 
a good stock. We do not like to see it disappear, but it certainly 
is disappearing, and relatively to other stocks it will, according 
to present indications, be less and less influential in the future life 
of the country. 

(2) There is increasing divorce. 

(3) There is in some parts of the western world increasing 
illegitimacy. This may or may not be true for this country, 
since we have so little accurate registration that it is difficult to 
know, but in certain European countries the increase, particularly 
in large cities, is striking. In Berlin, between the years 1891 
and 1909, legitimate births decreased 19 per cent (from 47,000 

6 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 

to 38,000); illegitimate increased 39 per cent, and are now at the 
rate of about one in five of all births. 

(4) The double standard of morals persists, and prostitu¬ 
tion as a profitable commercial enterprise is as strong as ever. 

(5) The “social diseases” are far too prevalent. 

(6) Various social agencies find so many of their problems 
thrust upon them by bad family conditions that the waste and 
expense of the situation are becoming increasingly evident. The 
defective children, the retarded children in the schools, the weak 
who swell the number of prostitutes, the boy criminals in our large 
cities, the deserted wives and children, the family troubles which 
come to light in our juvenile courts and courts of domestic rela¬ 
tions, all tell of failures which may or may not be out of proportion 
to what should be expected in any human institution, but are, at 
any rate, sufficiently numerous to be a challenge to our existing 
ethics. 

(7) Finally, the vast literature upon various aspects of the 
woman question reflects the friction which may not find outlet 
in the courts or the charities, but which, none the less, is very real 
in certain classes of families. 

Negative morality had good reasons for many of its pro¬ 
hibitions, and when there was no reason that we may now wish to 
call a good reason, there was at least an explanation. Passion 
needed and always will need stern limits set by reason, by author¬ 
ity, and by public opinion for the protection of both men and 
women, and particularly for the protection of women. There 
is also an element of true psychology in the taboos which the race 
has fixed upon excessive attention to the sexual life. While 
the original motive for these taboos may very likely have been in 
large part fear of contracting feminine weakness or fear of the 
ghosts that might be presumed to hover about at such a time as 
the birth of a child, there is, no doubt, a certain instinctive modesty 
which is one of the strongest supports to chastity and purity and 
which should not be broken down. Besides these valid reasons, 
there are special explanations for our inherited attitude. When 
people lived in small towns and knew each other intimately from 
childhood; when parents knew the habits of their neighbors' 
children almost as well as those of their own, and when daughters 

7 


THE FAMILY 


could have the parents’ advice, there was no such tendency to hasty 
marriages between persons who had had scarcely any opportunity 
to become acquainted as now exists in the large cities. Under 
such conditions, too, there was probably far less communicable 
disease. On the other hand, there was no need of especially 
inculcating the duty of marriage or the desirability of raising chil¬ 
dren. When no other way of support lay open to women, the 
pressure was strong in the direction of marriage. When people 
live largely an agricultural life, children are very little added 
expense, and are not only a joy, but frequently a great help to 
their parents in the house and on the farm. Among higher classes 
the importance of maintaining the family name and transmitting 
family wealth was a strong inducement which seems still to operate, 
especially in royalty and in the country families of Europe; but 
there is no great sentiment about passing down the family flat, 
and indeed the absence of any such family tradition is well sug¬ 
gested by the question of the child of one of my colleagues, when 
passing by a house where the parents had lived—“Is this one of 
the houses where I was born?” But there were other grounds less 
rational. The double standard, the harsh inequalities before the 
law, are survivals of military and aristocratic society. The sex 
taboos are in part due to outgrown superstitions, to crude beliefs 
about original sin, to degrading doctrine about woman. 

Besides the failures of negative morality, there are certain 
new values which demand recognition. 

(i) For the middle class family the great factor is undoubt¬ 
edly the new consciousness of personal rights, powers, and inter¬ 
ests on the part of women. We cannot expect to have higher 
education, new avenues of achievement, new means of economic 
support, new possibilities of freedom, and still retain the special 
type of monogamy which was characteristic of earlier civilization, 
and especially of a civilization which in many ways was brutal 
in its restraint upon woman. Reinforcing these is the ex¬ 
traordinary industrial change which has taken the productive 
work from woman, has made her a consumer, and has made it 
difficult, if not impossible, for her to maintain, on the one hand, 
her activity as an intellectual or executive person, and, on the 
other, her position as wife and mother. 

8 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 


(2) The second great positive value is the new recognition 
of the child. Our vast public school system, originally organized 
for protection to the state, is now definitely valued as an instru¬ 
ment for giving the child an opportunity to make the most of 
himself and to develop his powers. Great advances in medical 
science have restricted infantile diseases and magnified the general 
esteem of the importance of every human life. Societies for the 
care of orphans or neglected children, juvenile courts, associations 
of nurses, are indices of a growing conscience. This increased 
valuation upon children is not satisfied to continue the old proverb 
which Ezekiel contended against more than two thousand years 
ago: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's 
teeth are set on edge." Our older theology sent children un¬ 
baptized to limbo or to hell because of their parents' omissions or 
of the ancestral sin. For some time theology has balked at 
attributing such a destiny to the infant, but we are yet very slow 
about going the whole way. We have thus far hesitated to give 
the child a fair chance irrespective of his parents. We have 
assumed that the child born in a very poor family cannot expect 
good sanitation or opportunity for healthful play, or as good an 
education as the child born to the well-to-do. In the case of the 
illegitimate child we have been even more chary. But if I am 
not mistaken, the next generation will look for some way to control 
and, if necessary, punish reckless sex relations without visiting 
positively upon the children the iniquity of the fathers. 

(3) A third new value is that of the positive significance of 
sex and of motherhood. There has, of course, always been a 
literature of motherhood, and individuals have valued their own 
experiences as mothers or as children, but so much of the older 
valuation has been associated with limitations upon the life and 
activity of woman that it is not surprising to find certain writers 
minimizing the significance of sex in woman's life. They claim 
that sex has been exaggerated. They would settle the conflict 
between home and industry by encouraging women to enter 
gainful occupations. They would make motherhood incidental, 
rather than principal, in determining woman's plan of living. In 
contrast with these proposed solutions, which magnify the value 
of independent occupation and productive work in the world of 

9 


THE FAMILY 


industry or commerce, Ellen Key is distrustful of the effect upon 
woman's life of organized industry, and seeks a new appreciation 
of woman's sex life. It is not necessary to decide that all women 
must conform to one pattern, but taking woman as a whole, and 
taking business and industry as now organized, I should side with 
Ellen Key as contrasted with the opposing school. For a minority 
of women the path of freedom and development may lie through 
independent economic activity, and in case they have families, 
through such systematized care for children as would free the 
mother for her intellectual or active pursuits outside, but for the 
majority I believe that greater happiness, as well as fuller develop¬ 
ment, lies rather in magnifying family values and freeing them 
from the survivals of subordination, of unscientific and ill-organ¬ 
ized methods, which belong to former days. 

(4) The fourth positive value which demands recognition 
in the ethics of the family is the value of sound, healthy, and 
well-reared stocks, not merely for the individuals whose enjoyment 
and achievement are concerned, but for the community and the 
state. The pendulum swings back and forth between nature and 
nurture, between the importance of well-bred children and the 
importance of good environment. Just at present biology is 
laying great stress upon the former. With its Mendelian law as an 
instrument of analysis, biology is certainly bringing before us more 
forcibly than ever the importance of heredity. And as we are 
learning to think in terms not merely of to-day, but of to-morrow, 
not merely of the local community, but of the nation, we are 
gaining a new consciousness of the tremendous value to society 
of certain stocks. If anything was needed to reenforce this 
biological truth, the lessons of the war are fulfilling that task. It 
was the Boer war that awakened England to the deterioration of 
her population in physical stature. The present war has been a 
tremendous object-lesson of the value of giving thought to health 
and fitness. It is even conceivable that it may make its lesson 
so impressive as in a measure to reclaim from other forms of 
wastage the frightful waste of the best stock which it is itself dis¬ 
playing. 

These four new values—the value of women's freedom and 
development, the value of the child, the value of sex and especially 

10 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 


of motherhood, and, lastly, the value of sound stock well reared 
for national life and for the life of the world—must be reckoned 
with in the new ethics of the family. We can no longer meet the 
situation by taboos and negations, by ascetic restraints or senti¬ 
mental gush, nor by mere appeals to authority or reiterations of 
past conventions. We must look forward and think of the family 
in its larger relations. If we retain its essential features, it must 
be because they respond to these positive values and not because 
they have come down from the past. 

What are the lines along which our ethical consciousness is 
likely to move in recognizing these new values? Is it likely to 
shift in the direction of free love, so called, in the direction of 
economic independence for women, in the direction of less of 
family care and more of public care and control? 

The challenge to existing institutions comes partly on the 
ground of personal freedom. “Of all dogmas, monogamy has been 
that which has claimed most human sacrifices/' It comes partly 
on the ground that many women have no opportunity for marriage, 
whether this is due to such general urban conditions as increased 
living expenses, or to such special conditions as the larger relative 
number of women in certain European cities. Many are thus 
excluded from life’s greatest experience, from its greatest moral 
opportunity. Resenting these constraints and limitations, some 
would abolish the double standard by having woman adopt man’s 
standard rather than, as is more commonly advocated, by having 
man adopt woman’s. Others would shift toward freer divorce 
or toward increasing responsibility toward children, and sanc¬ 
tioning as moral any union which recognizes its responsibility 
in this respect. In contrast with present marriages, which are too 
often commercial or legal only, it is claimed that unions based on 
love and such responsibility for children would give better children 
and insure more genuinely moral relations. 

It is scarcely probable that society will change the double 
standard by adopting what is meant in this connection by the 
man’s standard. Even if the stricter standard for woman was 
originally based largely on property conceptions, it has, none the 
less, proved its right, not by increasing man’s privileges, but by 
establishing woman’s dignity. There is, however, one qualification 

11 


THE FAMILY 


on the other side. The reader of Forel and Havelock Ellis will 
not hastily assume that woman's standard is necessarily per¬ 
fect in all respects. It has been remarked that men sometimes 
think they are growing virtuous, when in fact they are merely 
growing old. It is possible that sometimes sex indifference is mis¬ 
taken for a positive virtue instead of being regarded as a defect— 
as it is from the point of view of family life. 

As regards proposals for freer unions regulated by responsi¬ 
bility for children, no one who reads Ellen Key, the ablest repre¬ 
sentative of this doctrine, can fail to recognize that a profound 
appreciation of woman's personality and of the importance of the 
child underlies her thought. The belief that the way out lies in 
the direction of emphasizing, rather than minimizing, the im¬ 
portance of sex and motherhood in woman's life will commend 
itself to many biologists and psychologists. Her insistence that 
moral progress lies along the lines of increasing the consciousness 
of responsibility for the child, and that this increasing responsi¬ 
bility, if taken seriously, would mean a higher level of family life 
than is found in perhaps the majority of cases, will be recognized 
by the moralist as in accord with the general line of moral progress 
from external to inner responsibility. The defects in her treat¬ 
ment, as I see them, are due to an inadequate psychology of love 
and to an overemphasis upon the individual aspect of personality. 
“A person can, therefore, no more promise to love or not to love 
than he can promise to live long" is her statement. This regards 
love as chiefly an emotion entirely out of control of choice and will. 
It makes this emotion the test of the morality of the sex relations; 
it believes this to be the best guarantee of the birth of better chil¬ 
dren. I conceive this to be bad psychology. Undoubtedly the 
thrill of emotion is only partially subject to control. None of us 
may be able to avoid the quiver of fear when thunder crashes, or 
the beginnings, at least, of anger at outrageous treatment; but 
we say it is the achievement of character to control these emotions, 
and the brave man stays at his post in spite of thunder. Con¬ 
versely, the will may indirectly do much to control the conditions 
under which emotion is likely to be felt. The man who looks too 
long may get involved beyond the power to stop, but the man of 
character will know when to stop, and will avoid situations that 

12 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 


are dangerous. And, on the positive side, love stands for much 
more than emotion. It is the resolute purpose to seek another's 
good. Such resolute purpose can be maintained even when 
physical attractiveness wanes and the thrill of emotion no longer 
is hot in the blood. It will show itself in crises of sickness or great 
need, although in the every-day round of events it may easily 
be subconscious. Such a purpose and the gradual effect of habit 
in adjusting personalities to each other, so that as ideas, joys, and 
sorrows are shared a companionship far more stable in its basis 
than the passion of youth supervenes, is the psychological ground 
for the moral ideal of life-long marriage. And when we add to 
this the importance to the child of two parents, rather than one, 
we have the basis on which, in the great majority of cases, the 
institution in substantially its present form is, I believe, likely to 
remain as the ideal. 

But even could love be so controlled, Key holds it ought not 
to be: The life-tree of a human being, in her opinion, is like the 
trees of the forest, not like those of a formal garden. “ Its beauty 
depends upon the freedom of the boughs to take unexpected 
curves." “One branch unexpectedly shoots out and another 
unaccountably withers." Personality is the ultimate test of moral 
value, and “unconditional fidelity to one person may be just as 
disastrous to the personality as unconditional continuance in a 
faith or an employment." 

This is a half-truth. Unconditional fidelity to one who, by 
persistent adultery, cruelty, debauchery, makes decency, self- 
respect, and proper conditions for children impossible, if it is ever 
justifiable as an act of voluntary renunciation in certain excep¬ 
tional cases, is no general principle of ethics and ought not to be 
required by law. The time is soon coming when an awakened 
conscience will regard venereal disease as an axiomatic bar to 
cohabitation, and unless innocently contracted, as ground for 
divorce. But to admit and insist that fidelity under such condi¬ 
tions is not demanded by good ethics is very different from setting 
up as our standard the trees of the forest. Civilization, after all, 
is a garden. No one may consider his own needs apart from his 
dependence upon all and the dependence of others upon him. 
Many a branch which might grow in a forest must be cut in a 

13 


I 


THE FAMILY 

garden. Personality, in its profound meaning, is indeed an ethical 
standard; but this meaning requires us to consider not merely 
impulses and tides of emotion, no matter how clamorous, but also 
the values of poise and self-control, of high-minded justice and 
scrupulous reverence for other personalities. 

The fact is that there are certain fundamental instincts and 
ideal needs in man and woman which are better met by the ex¬ 
clusive relation of man and woman, and by their permanent rela¬ 
tion, except under special circumstances, fairly well provided for by 
present laws. There is an instinct of jealousy, or at least a senti¬ 
ment, in the average man and woman which is exclusive and does 
not tolerate a divided affection. The story told by a settlement 
worker is true in large part to human nature. A woman came into 
a New York settlement house, and while waiting for an interview 
attracted the notice of a resident passing through the room. The 
resident spoke to one of the other neighbors and said, “What is 
the matter with that woman over there? She doesn’t look happy.” 
“ No,” said the neighbor, “ she ain’t. She’s married and has a good 
husband, but he lives with another woman and it annoys her.” 
When we add the fundamental need of the child for two parents, 
not merely for life’s beginning, but for life’s development; and 
finally when we add the need which the parents, on their side, 
have not merely for prevision and care of infancy and children, 
but also for the friendships and renewing contacts with youth, 
we have the main reasons why the ethical ideal of exclusive and 
permanent unions is likely to maintain itself. 

But while the general form of the family may remain, it is 
necessary to direct emphasis upon its positive values, rather than 
upon the negative. It is much more important to insist that the 
right parties marry, than to insist that married persons shall never 
separate. If we emphasize negations, let us at least place them 
where they will be of most use. It is more important, under 
existing conditions, to provide against marriage which will com¬ 
municate disease, against hasty marriages, against marriages which 
can never hope to bring sound, healthy children into the world, 
than to allow such people to marry indiscriminately and then in¬ 
veigh against the evils of divorce. And even these preventions can 


14 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 

be made effective only by providing positive agencies, social, 
economic, educational, for promoting right marriages. 

So far as children are concerned, evidently the emphasis 
required for the middle class and professional family is different 
from that required for the working-class family. The former tend 
to marry too late and to have too few children—the latter to have 
too many. The ethical emphasis for the former needs rather to 
be placed upon the larger social significance which the family 
has for community life. Our old negative morality is helpless 
here. In placing the family morals so largely upon certain ascetic 
conceptions of sex, or in trusting economic pressure upon woman 
to induce her to marry, the older morality could offer no counter¬ 
active to the modern woman’s love of freedom, to the opportunity 
for self-support, and to the modern man’s financial ambitions or 
love of ease. City conditions complicate the problem by their 
tendency to postpone marriage. The census figures show that 
in the city out of one hundred between the ages of twenty and 
twenty-four there are seventy-two single and twenty-six married, 
as compared with sixty-two single and thirty-six married in the 
country. Between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine we 
find in the city forty-four single and fifty-four married, and in the 
country thirty-five single and sixty-two married. This postpone¬ 
ment is due in part to greater cost of beginning a home, in part to 
the desire on the part of young people to begin in a more ambitious 
way, owing to the patterns of expensive living constantly before 
them, and in part it may be to the greater difficulty in making 
acquaintance on the part of those who have come to the city from 
other districts, and to the superior opportunities for comfort in 
single life which the city affords; yet a further factor in the case 
of many is the inability of the middle-aged and older members of 
the family, under modern industrial and commercial conditions, 
to support themselves, and the consequent burden imposed upon 
the younger members. All these factors make against family life. 
They work against the entrance upon family life at an age when 
there is greater plasticity; they tend to place a greater strain upon 
the chastity of young men, and to unfit them for fidelity in their 
later marriage relations. Nor is the effect upon young women less 
present, though in different fashion. The longer marriage is 

15 


THE FAMILY 


postponed after the normal period of say twenty-one to twenty- 
five, the less inclination is likely to exist for it, the less the power 
of adaptation to its conditions, and, in the case of women employed 
in many occupations, the less likely is the physical condition suited 
to find delight in motherhood. 

“Why has Mr. Smith changed his occupation from rail¬ 
roading to work in a bank when he seemed to be so much inter¬ 
ested in the former?” asked a lady of one of her acquaintances who 
was himself in the railroading business. “ I am afraid I am re¬ 
sponsible for that,” was the reply. “ I told him that if he stayed 
in the railroading business he could not marry until he was thirty- 
five.” I remarked to the lady that this seemed to me to imply a 
very exaggerated standard of what was necessary for marriage. 
“Yes,” she answered, “it is a pity that young people should think 
so much of pleasure as to miss happiness.” 

But it is not merely missing happiness. For those who are 
sound and clean, strong and vigorous, it is their great opportunity 
of service to the future of their country and its ideals. We must 
think more of the larger issues involved. 

Among the working-class families the ethical problem is very 
different. It is not a demand for greater freedom, but for greater 
responsibility, which is heard most often in the courts of domestic 
relations. In the experience of social workers the great complaint 
is that of failure to support or of outright desertion. In many cases 
there is too strong a correlation between rapid births and rapid 
deaths to be ignored. If, therefore, one is to help the morals of the 
working-class family, the raising of the standard of living is evi¬ 
dently the most hopeful line of attack, whether this takes the 
individual form of better training and education of both boys and 
girls, or the form of public control of housing and sanitation, of 
public insurance for unemployment, accident, and illness, and 
ultimately of a juster distribution of gains. 

Should the poor be taught also directly how to limit the 
number of children? This is a point actively in dispute at the 
present time. American law makes such instruction a criminal 
offense. In England information is open to any married persons. 
In France there is no restriction. Many writers are strongly 
opposed as to the ethics of the problem. Forel is as decided upon 

16 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 


one side as Foerster upon the other. On the one hand, it is urged 
that all the so-called upper classes have knowledge and act upon 
it, and that the present excessive birth-rate among the poor keeps 
them in poverty, causes ill health of mothers, and increases infant 
mortality to a shocking degree. On the other hand, it is urged 
as strongly that the proposed remedy is worse than the disease, 
since it proposes to free men from the necessity of any control 
over their senses. One point is agreed upon by both parties, that 
there are evils in the present situation, and that, as the standard 
of living rises, the family tends to assume a size which gives the 
best opportunity for the health and care of all concerned. Finally, 
as we have noted, the standard often rises too high, and the family 
passes out of existence. Perhaps the happy medium is more 
likely to be secured if we place our emphasis upon the positive 
values of health and opportunity for both mothers and children, 
if we aim primarily to raise the level of intelligence and considera¬ 
tion. Excessively large families are not the rule after the first or 
second generation of immigrants. 

Will the new ethics of the family favor a more closely knit 
economic unit or a greater economic independence of the woman? 
Will the tendency be for the woman to enter more and more the 
field of production, or should stress rather lie upon a better scien¬ 
tific knowledge for consumption and home work? Shall the public 
take over more of the parental functions, as it has already taken 
over so much of sanitation and education, or shall it, by payments 
to mothers, emphasize home values? Each of these alternatives 
claims its advocates, but, as Mr. Rubinow has so clearly pointed 
out, the problem of economic independence is not the same for the 
middle and professional class woman as for the working-class 
woman. For the former, economic independence means freedom 
to enter some congenial occupation. For the latter, on the other 
hand, it would ordinarily mean work in factory or shop under 
conditions which are likely to be physically exhausting and not 
mentally stimulating. 

With the middle class or professional family there seems no 
reason why all should follow a uniform rule. On this I venture to 
repeat what I have written before: “If both husband and wife 
carry on gainful occupations, well; if one is occupied outside the 

17 


THE FAMILY 


home and another within, well also. Which plan is followed ought 
to depend on which plan is better on the whole for all concerned. 
And this will depend largely on the woman's own ability and tastes 
and upon the number and age of the children. But the economic 
relation is not the essential thing. The essential thing is that the 
economic be made subordinate to the larger conception of a com¬ 
mon good." 

As regards those women who would enter factory and shop, 
there are probably already too many rather than too few employed. 
Legislation which decreases the number of hours is important, so 
far as it goes, but I cannot believe that, for the great majority of 
women, such outside work is either necessary or desirable from the 
point of view of their own lives or the welfare of the family. There 
is usually no great objection on the part of the husband in working- 
class families to the extra wage, although not all husbands take 
such a high stand as the husband of my neighbor's laundress. 
He declares his principle to be that he will not live with any woman 
who does not support him. This might be regarded as standing so 
erect as to lean backward. 

The great point on which more positive ethics for the work¬ 
ing-class family should center, I repeat, is a higher standard of 
living, a higher wage and better house, better opportunities for 
play, and longer and better education for the children. The 
striking testimony of Henry Ford as to his experience may not 
warrant us in any sweeping optimism that a minimum wage of 
five dollars a day would be a key to every form of family difficulty. 
It is doubtless true, as claimed, that prostitution may not be in 
large measure the simple consequence of direct economic pressure 
upon the woman worker. None the less it is true that prostitutes 
are not recruited in any large proportion from the well-to-do or 
the well-educated classes. Children who grow up in a comfortable 
home with intelligent parents have a multitude of fences and sup¬ 
ports about them to steady them through the troublous years from 
childhood into manhood and womanhood. The lack of privacy, 
decency, comfort, and of resources in which great multitudes of our 
city children are now brought up is a far stronger menace to family 
life than any ethical—or unethical—theory or any frequency of 


18 


THE ETHICS OF THE FAMILY 

divorce, and when we have remedied some of these conditions, 
we can speak more confidently as to the next thing. 

On the question of public care versus home provision it may 
seem that the tendency is decisive. The nurse is better trained 
than the average mother; the teacher is far better informed than 
either parent. Industry removes the father from the home; in 
well-to-do families it takes active occupations away from the wife, 
and in poorer families forces the mother into outside occupations; 
if, now, in addition science deals the last blow by saying that chil¬ 
dren can be better provided for collectively, are we not putting 
our money on the wrong horse if we back the family? 

For one, I am not in love with the alternative. I do not see 
in our modern hours of industry, our preposterous flats and city 
crowding, the ultimate goal of civilization. I do not think chil¬ 
dren can dispense with parents. Still less do I think parents can 
afford to lose the responsibility, the direct education, and the joy 
of association with children. 

In a word, to quote Ellen Key once more, “ It is not the family 
that ought to be abolished, but the rights of the family that must 
be reformed; not education by parents that ought to be avoided, 
but education of parents that must be introduced; not the home 
that ought to be done away with, but homelessness that must 
cease.”* 

If our present industrial trend were inevitable and irremedi¬ 
able, I doubt if it would be worth while to discuss the ethics of the 
family. But this Conference does not easily admit bad conditions 
to be inevitable. It has attacked child labor. It has seen the 
beginning of aid to mothers in keeping their families together. 
It has seen the hours of many kinds of labor reduced to permit 
home life. City housing may seem so tremendous an obstacle 
that it cannot be overcome, but though I do not expect to see 
cities of homes replace cities of flats, there may be some of our 
number who will. Eugenics is likely to make mistakes, but it 
shows signs of promise. Great employers of labor do not all, 
like Mr. Roberts, of the steel corporation, regard it as “a purely 
academic question” whether a twelve-hour day permits family 


Ellen Key, Love and Marriage, p. 240. 

*9 


THE FAMILY 


and civic life.* Higher education will perhaps not always insist 
upon identical curricula for men and women. Democracy in 
national life steadies as it grows older. So will democracy in 
family life. The ethics of the family may, therefore, frame a 
positive program of freer discussion and education. It may set 
as its ideal higher standards of fitness for marriage, of equality, 
fidelity, and affection in marriage, and of joy in children. It may 
magnify not only the mission of the soul to refine the sense, but 
that of the sense to give power and enhancement to the soul. 
And finally it will not need to adopt Plato's grades of value with 
their implied depreciation of family relations. All men, says 
Plato, crave immortality. Some seek for immortality through the 
offspring of their bodies; others are creative in their minds and 
their offspring is the nobler. Rather we may say the nobler ideal 
for men and women is to be creative in both mind and body. 
Certainly the family will not thrive by denying either mind or 
body, but by uniting the two. 

* Iron Age, February 22, 1912, p. 482. 


20 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE 
FAMILY IDEAL 

SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 



THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE FAMILY IDEAL 

By Samuel McChord Crothers 

D OCTOR HOLMES began the “Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table'’ with the sentence, “As I was about to remark when 
I was interrupted.” That is the way in which philanthro¬ 
pists and reformers must begin in this year 1915. They cannot 
report orderly progress. This has been the year of the great 
interruption. It is no accident that we are asked to consider the 
year as well as the subject for discussion. Everything is in¬ 
fluenced by the great war. Shakespeare’s words come to us with 
a solemn meaning: 

“ Reckoning time, whose million’d accidents 
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings. 

Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents. 

Divert strong minds to the course of altering things.” 

In this year strong minds have been diverted from the plans 
which they had made in peaceful times. Wherever people meet 
they are conscious of the altering things. A little while ago they 
were discussing the next step in civilization. Now they are asking, 
what can be saved from the wreck of civilization? 

But it is an evidence of the sanity of social workers that they 
do not yield easily to despair. 

After we have recovered from the first shock we take for 
granted not only that something can be saved out of the ruin of 
civilization, but that there is a forward step. Even in the world 
as it is to-day there are things to be done sanely and cheerfully. 
It is not because we underestimate the tremendous tragedy and 
the tremendous danger of the times that we come with the cheerful 
courage to take up the business of philanthropy, “as usual.” 
The Prophet Jeremiah has a poor reputation as an optimist, be¬ 
cause, seeing the immediate evils that were about him, he called 
attention to them; seeing Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts about to 

23 


THE FAMILY 


besiege Jerusalem, he did not shut his eyes, but would rather go to 
prison than say that Nebuchadnezzar was not a reality. But the 
Prophet Jeremiah, though he was not an optimist, was an exceed¬ 
ingly shrewd and clear-headed man of business, and when 
Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts were at the gates of Jerusalem, he 
thought this was a very good time to buy real estate, and so he 
tells us, in one remarkable chapter, how he saw a good bit of land 
that was about to be sold cheap, and he called the notary and the 
witnesses, and he bought that land. And he remarked to those 
that were about him, “ Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet 
again be bought in this land/' 

Now that is the way we feel, all of us, in regard to the next 
steps in the great forward movement of humanity. After all, a 
war is but an incident in the history of humanity—though a 
terrible incident. In this year we go about our business as usual, 
trying to see what is necessary for the peaceful, prosperous evolu¬ 
tion of mankind. 

When we come to discuss the family in this year nineteen 
hundred and fifteen, it must be in relation to what is now hap¬ 
pening. Usually we have been tremulous and anxious in regard 
to the family as something that must be protected. This year 
we turn to it as something to protect us. We seek to learn the 
secret of its strength, and to apply that power. 

For of all human institutions, the family is the oldest and 
the toughest in its fiber. It is because it is strong that it has held 
its own in the constant struggle for existence. There may be 
conventionality in the explanations that may from time to time 
be given of it, but the thing itself is based not on something arti¬ 
ficial, but on that which is most primitive. It is held together 
by the most primitive and powerful passion. 

When Brer Rabbit was thrown into the brier patch, he was 
not alarmed, but cried cheerily—“Bred and born in de brier 
patch, Brer Fox!” 

The family was born in the brier patch of barbarism. It 
is familiar with its passions and its cruelties. If it has emerged, 
it has been because of its inherent force. There is nothing in 
human experience which it has not passed through. 

In one sense the family is the cause of war. It is what men 
24 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE FAMILY IDEAL 

fight for. The warrior has his highest incentive to prowess when 
he fights to protect his home. 

In another and a larger sense the family ideal is that which 
brings lasting peace. It offers the only sufficient bond to unite 
individuals and to win them to cooperation. The word kindness 
is but another form of kin-ness. It indicates our true attitude to 
those who are kin to us. These are our “relations.” The sense 
of human relations begins with the family. I must love and 
help those who belong to my family or clan. Primitive ethics is 
based on the solidarity of the family. The Shunamite woman 
in the Old Testament answers simply, “1 dwell with mine own 
people/' 

When other tribes threaten ours, there is war. But within 
the bonds of kinship there is peace. 

Let us look at the bond which unites the family. The 
essential thing is the relation which is established between the 
strong and the weak. When people talk of the man and the super¬ 
man, they take it for granted that the superman will use his 
strength for his own development. Being strong, he will make 
himself stronger at the expense of the weak. 

But in the family the parent is the superman. The child 
is utterly weak and ignorant. He cannot compete in any way. 

Does the parent then feel that he may conserve his strength 
at the expense of the child? Is he tempted to take advantage of 
one weaker than himself? The law of the family forbids. 

It is seen that, from the very nature of the family, strength 
and weakness do not inhere in the individual. Each one of us 
begins in weakness, grows through the help of our nearest of kin 
to such measure of strength as maturity may bring, and then sinks 
into weakness again. Each one in turn is protector and in need 
of protection. There is no permanently strong member of the 
group. The strength of the group itself depends upon the recogni¬ 
tion of the common need. 

When the father and mother are at the height of their 
capacity for work, they are working for their children, on whom 
they expect to rely in their old age. They are thinking of to¬ 
morrow and of the day after to-morrow. In caring for their 
children the parents are preparing for themselves happiness in 

25 


THE FAMILY 


the days to come. In honoring the parent the child is honoring 
his own future. 

Out of this has evolved a relation in which gifts are given 
and received without pride on the part of the benefactor, or ser¬ 
vility on the part of the beneficiary. It is a mutual benefit society 
in which, in the end, all share alike. No one is pauperized by what 
he receives as a member of a family. There is no loss of self- 
respect in receiving favors from one’s own father. Other organiza¬ 
tions emphasize differences in strength and ability. In the family 
each member passes through all stages and has a recognized place 
and duty at each successive stage. 

How can this family ideal be given larger scope and be made 
more effective? It can only be a growth from within. There 
must be a clear and strong sense of actual relationship. No 
matter how scientific we are in our methods, or how zealous we 
may be in our labor, we can find no substitute for the sense of 
actual kinship. 

When we try to do good to persons with whom we feel that 
we are not kin, we cannot but be patronizing or condescending. 
Our manner betrays our inner thought. They resent the attempts 
made in their behalf. What right have these aliens to interfere 
with their affairs? 

The possibility of genuine cooperation comes only when 
there is an appeal to a family motive. The individual then loses 
himself in labor for the group to which he belongs. 

Thomas Fuller, in dedicating one of his books to a youth 
of a noble family, tells him that England in every generation had 
a Montagu who took a noble part in his country’s history. Every 
family has, he said, its beginners, its continuers, its forwarders, 
and its ruiners. He urges the lad not to be content to be a mere 
continuer of the family fortunes. He must have the ambition to 
be a forwarder. He must be willing and eager to begin where his 
fathers left off, and so push the family fortunes forward. There 
can be no stronger appeal to generous youth than this. It is the 
complete identification of themselves with those from whom they 
derive life itself. The son simply goes forward to fulfil the task 
his father began. 

The need for an enlargement of the family ideal appeals to 
26 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE FAMILY IDEAL 

us in this year nineteen hundred and fifteen with an earnestness 
and a cogency that perhaps have never been felt before. How far 
can this simple ideal of the family relation, a relation not merely 
of the weak or of the strong, but a relation in which weakness is 
ever growing into strength and strength passing again into de¬ 
pendency—how can that perfectly natural bond be enlarged? 
I said that the family and the clan have in them the seeds both of 
peace and of war. The family as against other families means 
war. The family ideal enlarged, rationalized, made effective, is 
the thing which unites us in the great effort which we are making 
for the welfare of mankind. All other organizations are weak 
simply because they are the organizations of the few for the benefit 
of the many. 

Whenever we think that our work is simply to gather to¬ 
gether the strong, the clear-headed, the refined, the prosperous, 
the intellectual classes for the benefit of other classes of the com¬ 
munity, then our very good will be evil spoken of. What right, 
it is asked, have you to patronize us? What right have you, the 
prosperous classes of the community, to set yourselves above us 
and then reach down to us? It is just because so much phil¬ 
anthropic work is so understood, it is because the real family 
feeling has not entered into our own hearts so as to be the con¬ 
trolling motive, that there is such misconception of our efforts. 
Suppose we all of us come to an absolutely different notion. The 
mere difference of education, the difference of condition, the 
accidents of life, these are nothing in themselves. What does it 
matter whether I as an individual have certain advantages or not? 
I grew out of helpless infancy. I return again at last to a state 
where no longer can I be an efficient power in the world, but the 
world goes on. The family to which I belong goes on. It is 
possible for me to take my place and do my part, and only in that 
do I find any advantage whatever in living. 

The call of our kin is the most powerful of human motives. 
The question for us is whether we can make it effective for con¬ 
structive work. Who are our kin, those for whom we gladly live 
and for whom we would gladly die? Time was when the only 
effective sense of kinship was in the clan warring against other 
clans. Now the nation conceived of as a larger clan has that 

27 


THE FAMILY 


compelling power. The nation calls, and the citizen answers, 
“ I come!” 

But now we are conscious of the need of a larger loyalty, 
based on a compelling sense of kinship. There is something be¬ 
yond the nation—it is mankind. The call of the human comes 
to us. It is not a mere intellectual generalization, this idea of 
mankind. It is a fact of our real relations to one another. As the 
world becomes smaller it is impossible to deny these relations. 
We need to understand and interpret them. All philanthropy is 
a recognition of this larger kinship, with its call for disinterested 
service. We have great allies. Religion, when purified from tribal 
superstitions, is a powerful enforcement of the family ideal. Its 
great prayer begins with “Our Father” and ends with the procla¬ 
mation of a social gospel, “ Thine is the kingdom and the power 
and the glory.” Let that prayer be realized, and we are conscious 
of belonging to one great family. 

Modern philosophy is on our side. It has ceased to empha¬ 
size differences which once seemed absolute. Life flows in dif¬ 
ferent channels, but it is flowing from the same source. To be 
alive is to be akin to all that lives. 

And happily to the modern world there has come a new 
power which tends to unity. Science is no respecter of persons. 
It speaks a common language, and one free from the superstition 
and prejudice of past years. It does not take into account the dis¬ 
tinctions yours and mine, save as they are related to eternal law. 
You go about your work, work for the survey of conditions, work 
for the study of facts. 11 seems passionless, it seems to be but little, 
that technique of which we speak. And yet the ultimate effect of 
that study, painstaking and careful and fearless, is the actual change 
of those conditions. It demonstrates to us our kinship, that we 
are all of a kind, and that the law for one must be the law for all. 
Religion long ago declared its sublime message that we are chil¬ 
dren of one Father. Philosophy long ago made the best men feel 
that nothing human can be foreign to the man of thought. Now, 
not from one side, but from thousands of investigators, the idea 
is brought home to us that it is absolutely impossible for any one 
to live a life of unrelated virtue. That only is good which makes 
for the common good. 


28 


THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE FAMILY IDEAL 


We know not what shall be. We know not through what 
tragedies our world must pass before it learns the simple lesson of 
how men and women and children are to live together in this world. 
We do know, however, this, that within certain limits the way has 
been found, and that it is not the way by which the strong trample 
on the weak and so grow stronger. It is the way father and mother 
and brother and sister actually live in the well-ordered home. We, 
interested in the complex conditions of the larger world, are we not 
all united on this, that we are all trying, each in his own way, to 
bring the larger world into the relation of members of one family? 


29 

















The National Conference of Charities 
and Correction 

The addresses printed in this pamphlet are two of the 116 de¬ 
livered at the 47 different sessions of the Forty-second National 
Conference of Charities and Correction, which was held at Balti¬ 
more for a week in May, 1915. This Conference is an outgrowth 
of the Social Science Association, and was originally a gathering 
of members of the few state boards of charities which were in 
existence in the 'yo's. Its membership now represents every 
variety of social service activity, voluntary and governmental, 
and every shade of religious and social opinion. Any one inter¬ 
ested in its objects is eligible for membership, and all members are 
entitled to its Bulletins and volumes of Proceedings. 

Many of the social reforms now well established in America were 
first advocated at this Conference, which exists to discuss social 
problems and disseminate information with regard to them, but 
does not formulate platforms. 

The sessions of 1916 will be held at Indianapolis. Annual mem¬ 
bership for those who join in 1915, $2.50; after January 1, 1916, 
$3.00; sustaining membership, $ 10 . 00 . 

Address for further information about publications, membership, 
program of the next Conference, etc., 

Wm. T. Cross, General Secretary, 

315 Plymouth Court, Chicago, III. 
























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